Old Friends & New Adventures

This past week or so has been filled with both meeting up with old friends and experiencing new things, which has been awesome for the living-life-to-the-fullest experiences but not so good for my studying. However, I have no regrets about this. Life is meant to be lived and people are an important priority. It just means that I'll have to be on work lock down this weekend, and I'm ok with that.

First I got to have dinner with my rival college pole vaulting friend Brian and his wife Lucy. They've been out here for a little over two years and he is also in the Navy as a pilot. It was really wonderful to be able to meet up, catch up, and share stories. I'm hoping that we'll be able to get together & hang out more in the future :)

Next was a meal with Adrian friend Michael and his wife and daughter. I hadn't seen Michael since we graduated high school so it was really nice to reminisce, talk about family, and what we've been up to since. He and his wife are/were both Navy out here as well, but are getting out soon and heading back to Michigan in the near future. It's a small world and the Navy makes it even smaller sometimes.

Finally Kristin got to come visit for a few days tagged onto a friend's wedding. Seeing a familiar face and catching up like old times is definitely a treasured time. I'm so glad she was able to get a couple of extra days off to hang out for while!

Me & Kristin at Dining Out

Some of the new things I/we were able to do recently were a day trip to Tijuana, an exploration of Legoland, our first attempts at paddleboarding, and my first Navy dining out experience. Tijuana is going to have a be a post by itself--lots learned & experienced there. But here's a pic in the meanwhile.

Planting trees at the Valle del Campo school yard & giving them some water 

Legoland was a fun day! It was great to be a big kid, to ride some (small) rides, and to run around oooh-ing and ahhh-ing at the lego structures. There are a ton of complex, detailed creations there--I can't even imagine how one would go about trying to put those together! Blew my mind!

A Mini-Washington DC, all made out of Legos--so cool!

Hanging out with a giant Lego man named Max

Paddleboarding was something that I would definitely do again. We went with the USD Grad & Law students out to Mission Point, thinking it would be nice, sunny weather when we signed up a couple of weeks ago. No such luck. It was cold, windy, rainy, and very atypical San Diego weather. We stayed anyway, bundled up in our layers, and made it out on the water. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be--balancing on the board wasn't much of a problem and steering around was just like a kayak in many ways. I could see it being a lot more difficult out on open ocean waters with waves, etc, but being in an inlet made for a very positive first time experience.

Bundled up & ready to try it out

So far, so good. Staying upright!

And finally Dining Out with the Intern class. I was told that it wasn't a "real" dining out experience since they weren't in their uniforms and didn't go through some of the traditional things, but we had a great time nonetheless. It was held out on Coronado and included dinner, drinks, and dancing--so authentic or not we had a great time. It's always good for Brian and the other interns to get a chance to relax. They've been working their butts off and deserve a break like this for sure.

All dressed up for dining out

The Peds boys

Lovely ladies

Overall, it's been a great week or so! But now time to get back to the grind and hopefully get some of this work done. The end of the semester is creeping up and will be here before I know it! (So if there's no new posts for a while, you now know why ;) )

A Night at the Opera

New posts in the same week? Just don't expect it regularly :P

On Friday we went to see the San Diego Opera performance of "Murder in the Cathedral". Being a full-time student I was able to get a handful of discounted tickets (only $10 a piece!), so we made a friends outing of it. With the student pricing we weren't able to pick our seats and were expecting to be back in a nosebleed section--boy were we wrong! We had great orchestra seats, just off center, and were able to see quite well. 

"Murder in the Cathedral" is about the assassination of Thomas Beckett and is an Italian opera written by Pizzetti. The set was simple, but beautiful, and it was a fun experience! The only think I think I'd do differently next time is to be sure to thoroughly read the storyline synopsis beforehand so I could focus more on the singing and stage movements and less putting together the plot. 

Opera night with fun friends

View from our seats

The playbill/program

My cute date :)

Traveling Adventures and Other Happenings

Hmm....two months between posts..... In our defense we've been working hard and having a blast, so that counts for something, right?

Grad school is going well but is definitely keeping me busy. I'm currently working on my action research project proposal and man, I am glad I did not go into the research field for a living! I'm really interested in my topic (using positive psychology-based methods to improve student happiness and overall success) but there's so much information that it gets frustrating to sort through it all sometimes. What keeps me going though is knowing that the reading and research I do will directly impact my students and my teaching--so that makes it all worth it in the long run :) On top of classes, I'm going through the job search process to hopefully find a teaching position for the fall. Although I'm really enjoying my classes, I can't wait to get back in the classroom full-time again. So fingers crossed that I can find somewhere as awesome as MEH and ACLA were/are!

Brian has, not surprisingly, been working his butt off. Intern year is much like people warned us it would be with him working long hours and sometimes crazy shift schedules. He still loves pediatrics, but we were both excited when he finally had a couple of rotations where he could take leave. We took advantage of his vacation days and were blessed to be able to do a fair amount of traveling during that time. 

First there was San Antonio for Nate the Great's wedding, 

then we went up to Seattle to visit Mama & Papa Taylor, 

and down to Portland to see sister Katy, Matt, & the kids,

and most recently we went out to Hawaii to spend some time with our friends Drew & Sara. 

Blessed really is the only word for it. As much as it stinks to be far away from family and many of our friends, I love that we live in a time where we can 1.) visit them so easily, 2.) keep connected via texts/calls/facebook, and 3.) pick up right where we left off. We love to travel and hope to do a lot more of it in the future to continue visiting family & friends. 

But it hasn't all been happy fun times. Brian's Aunt Joyce passed away in February. Death is never easy to deal with, so being able to visit his family was timely and healing. Aunt Joyce loved life, so toasting to her, sharing fond memories, and enjoying the trip with her on our minds seemed like things she would have wanted us to do. 

Living life to the fullest and loving those around us--that's really what it's all about, and what we hope to do.